An electro-optic (EO) optical intensity modulator is often used when one needs to convert electrical signals to optical signals. This can be achieved by using the modulator to turn on and off the optical power from a continuous-wave (CW) laser beam passing through the modulator. Optical intensity modulators are thus used widely in optical fiber communications to modulate light from semiconductor lasers to produce the required optical pulses carrying digital data for transmission through optical fibers. At data rates below 2.5 Gigabits per second (Gbits/sec), it is much more convenient to simply directly modulate the injection current of the semiconductor laser to produce the required optical pulses. However, direct current modulation can produce frequency chirping (change in the lasing frequency at the leading and trailing edges of the pulse) caused by the carrier-induced modulation of the laser material's refractive index and hence, the resonant frequency of the laser cavity. At high modulation rates (above 10 Gbits/sec), a frequency chirped pulse will be rapidly broadened in width after propagating through a long length of optical fiber due to the fiber's group velocity dispersion, causing serious degradation in the signal integrity. Thus, external optical intensity modulators are needed for long-distance optical communications at bit rates at or above 10 Gbits/sec.
Current commercially-available high-speed EO optical intensity modulators are based on lithium niobate crystals (LiNbO3). These modulators typically have on/off switching voltages (also called half-wave voltage or π-phase-shift voltage, Vπ) of ˜5 V and electrical terminal impedance Z of ˜50Ω. (B. Kuhlow, “Modulators”, in Laser Fundamentals. Part 2, Springer Berlin Heidelbert, 2006.) This means that the electrical power required to drive the modulator given by P=Vπ2/Z will be about 0.5 W, which is high and quite inefficient in terms of electrical-to-optical signal-power conversion, considering that typical semiconductor laser powers emitted into optical fibers is less than 10 mW. Since electrical power is proportional to the voltage squared, there is much interest in reducing the driving voltage of the modulator. For example, a 0.5 V modulation voltage will reduce the drive power to 5 mW, making it closer to achieving a one-to-one electrical-to-optical signal-power conversion when used with a typical semiconductor laser emitting 1-10 mW power into an optical fiber.
Based on the capability of modulating the light intensity in optical fibers with analog high-frequency signals by using EO modulators, there has been much recent interest in using optical fibers to transmit analog radio-frequency (RF) electrical signals by first intensity modulating a laser beam with the RF signals and then recovering the RF signals with a photodetector that converts optical power back to electrical voltage. This area of pursuit is referred to as RF Photonics. The interest in RF Photonics arises because the traditional way to transmit RF signals is with use of a metallic RF transmission line (or coax cable), which can become quite lossy at frequencies above 10 GHz due to skin-depth effects (electrical current confinement to a thin layer at the metal surface) that becomes more serious at higher frequencies. High-frequency metallic transmission lines are also costly and heavy in weight. For reasons similar to those discussed above, in order for an RF signal of power PRF to be transmitted through an optical fiber and be converted back to an RF signal of power ˜PRF at the photodetector, without adding significant excess noise (i.e., in order to realize a near-lossless and low-noise RF signal transmission with near-unity noise figure), EO intensity modulators with V, less than 0.5V are required (when used with a typical 1-10 mW semiconductor laser). Otherwise, semiconductor lasers and detectors designed for significantly higher optical powers (e.g. 100 mW-1 W) would be required, resulting in significantly higher total electrical power consumption and higher cost. Such high-speed low-voltage modulators are difficult to realize using LiNbO3 due to its relatively low electro-optic coefficient.
Recently, it has been shown that organic EO materials can be engineered to have high EO coefficients (>5× than LiNbO3), leading to alternatives for new sub-1-Volt organic EO modulators (for 2-cm long devices). (See, e.g., L. R. Dalton, et al., From molecules to opto-chips: organic electro-optic materials, J. Mater. Chem. 9, 1905-1920, 1999; Y. Shi, et al., Electro-optic polymer modulators with 0.8 V half-wave voltage, Appl. Phys. Lett. 77, 1-3, 2000; Y. Enami, et al., Low half-wave voltage and high electro-optic effect in hybrid polymer/sol-gel waveguide modulators, Appl. Phys. Lett., 89, 143506, 2006; Y. Enami, et al., Hybrid polymer/sol-gel waveguide modulators with exceptionally large electro-optic coefficients, Nature Photonics, 1, 180-185, 2007, each of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.) However, current modulator designs and component materials tend to limit further advances in performance. As such, it remains an ongoing concern in the art to develop new modulator structures to better utilize the benefits and advantages available through use of such EO materials—such modulators as can enable RF photonics and next-generation higher-bit-rate optical fiber communication systems.